It wasn't Trashcan Man's idea to raid rec.pets.cats, though I'm
sure he wished it had been.

Inciting a riotous Usenet flame war, like the war between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats, isn't a common notion of a good time. Then again, neither is starting fires in trashcans, blowing up one's hand with a firecracker or crashing a university computer system - all things that Trashcan Man has done, and done proudly.

If you're a reader of alt.tasteless, as I am, you've probably heard of Trashcan Man. His real name is Constantino Tobio Jr., and he's a 21-year-old history major at Columbia University, in Manhattan. Everyone, though, calls him by his self-annointed nickname.

Trashcan Man's two favorite possessions are a coin purse made from a kangaroo scrotum and a tin of Vegemite. Vegemite is an Australian food substance made from yeast extract. It has the consistency of axle grease. Among readers of alt.tasteless, who prize Vegemite for its sublimely disgusting flavor, the spread has achieved cultlike status. According to one a.t.'er, "It was the grossest thing I ever tasted. It's about as thick as peanut butter, and to say it tastes like shit would be an understatement."

Which is an intriguing thought: Trashcan Man fearing something. He doesn't even fear Karen Kolling, and she is the one who finally brought him down. Trashcan Man, like most of the hardcore correspondents on alt.tasteless, spends so much time probing the darkest grottoes of human experience and imagination that the thought of his actually fearing something is itself frightening to contemplate.

You should know that Usenet, the battleground for what has become known as The War Between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats, is the Internet's answer to Time Warner's 500 channels of cable. Usenet makes 500 channels seem limited, frankly. There are more than 4,000 "news groups" on Usenet; more come online every week. Each one is dedicated to one niche interest or another. You can read daily collections of messages dedicated to LISP programming in one group (comp.lang.lisp), Bob Dylan's music (rec.music.dylan) in another, and fireworks (rec.pyrotechnics) in a third. This last one is the group Trashcan Man posted to on July 4, 1993, minutes after he nearly blew off his fingers with a blockbuster firecracker.

Usenet is like a vast computer bulletin board, readable by more than 10 million people around the world every day. It actually does cable one better: It's already interactive. You can post notes to Usenet groups, ask questions, comment on someone else's remarks, conjecture idly and often.

Which is how Trashcan Man and his pals started the war of words that got out of control.

It's hard to say with precision how many people actually read any one news group. (The term news groups is peculiar, since most of the postings, known as "articles," would not be considered news. Nevertheless, Usenet users refer to them in this way.) The Internet, as you probably know, is anarchic, not owned by anyone, and monitored mainly at its ever-expanding edges by the system administrators who sell or give people access. Periodically, various surveys attempt to poll Internet sites that distribute net news. These surveys give rough estimates of who reads which news groups.

So who reads the articles posted to alt.tasteless? According to a Q&A in the alt.tasteless FAQ (most news groups have FAQs, or Frequently Asked Questions files), 60,000 people around the world browse it. You can believe it or not; I choose to believe it in the same way that I believe most people will slow down and take a good look at the carnage of a car accident. Why do we look?

WELCOME TO ALT.TASTELESS
1. What is alt.tasteless?
A news group devoted to tasteless phenomena in all its forms. A place for people with a twisted and sick sense of humour. In alt.tasteless we like to get into the details: short jokes have their forum in alt.tasteless.jokes, we want the feel of it, the smell of it, the stench of it, every little rotten and pus-oozing detail. And then of course some rough gifs of it in alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless or alt.tasteless.pictures.
- From the alt.tasteless FAQ

Alt.tasteless was created in the autumn of 1990 "as a place to keep the sick people away from rec.humor and other forums," according to Steven Snedker, a Danish journalist for Denmark's largest computer magazine. "Alt.tastelessers see this as an important turn in Usenet history, on a par with the creation of alt.sex. Both alt.tasteless and alt.sex are fine forums that serve their purpose to keep the other parts of Usenet clean, and to dig further into the stuff
discussed."

Josh Quittner (quit@newsday.com) covers technology for Newsday. He co-wrote the high-tech thriller Mother's Day with his wife, Michelle Slatalla.